Dialysis treatment is a matter of life and death for the 80,000 Californians who receive treatment three times a week in the state’s 588 licensed chronic dialysis clinics. Physicians warn that patients missing even one treatment increase their risk of death by 30 percent.

Proposition 8 would cap dialysis clinics’ profits at 15 percent, forcing them to offer rebates to insurance companies at the end of every year if dialysis companies’ margins exceed the cap. In calculating profits, direct patient care services would be counted as operating expenses, but other costs, such as administrative overhead, would not.